By motor to the Golden Gate — Reading Notes

A Preface That Frames the Journey

Post’s preface is not a mere formality; it is a compact statement of method. She anticipates criticism from locals who might find her comments on “poor roads” or “poor hotels” squeamish, and from readers who expect unqualified praise. Her solution is to let the story stand as written, “taking nothing back that seems to me true.” This early declaration of honesty—tempered by humility—prepares the reader for a narrative that will balance enthusiasm with complaint. The preface also acknowledges that only long-term residents can truly depict a place; the tourist’s view is superficial. This is not false modesty but a deliberate framing: Post positions herself as a New Yorker whose opinions are one of “fifty million other American opinions.”

Lost on the Prairie: Navigating by Instinct

The first extended excerpt plunges the reader into confusion. Post and E. M. follow vague directions from Spanish-speaking men, then find a bridge “without any tracks leading to it” while snow erases shadows. Two Indians on ponies lead them wordlessly through a “labyrinthian path” to the mesa. The prose captures the tension of being utterly dependent on strangers. Post’s description of the Indians’ faces as “as expressionless as wood-carvings” is blunt, but she notes their willingness and grave courtesy. The episode ends with a cowboy galloping toward them “as a brigand might,” and Post’s heart thumps with excitement. The encounter is rich with unspoken codes: the cowboy’s “Howdy, strangers!” and E. M.’s matching of manner for manner, both men unsmiling. Post observes that throughout the West, “how seldom anyone has smiled.”

The Cowboy’s Dignity and the Traveler’s Gaze

Post’s portrait of the cowboy is detailed and ambivalent. She notes his “murderous-looking cartridge belt and revolver” but also his “distinctly pleasing personality” and “very real dignity.” The cowboy refuses lunch because he “et dinner ’bout an hour ago,” a detail that reveals both politeness and pride. Post contrasts E. M.’s sun-browned skin with the cowboy’s copper-brown face and startling blue eyes. The scene is a study in mutual assessment: the cowboy glances at their license plate, the travelers size him up. Post admits she was “far too fascinated to feel either fear or inclination to escape.” This moment crystallizes the book’s appeal: the thrill of the unfamiliar, rendered with a novelist’s eye for gesture and dialogue. The cowboy’s laconic speech—“Which them machines shorely disregards distance a whole lot”—is rendered phonetically, preserving the regional voice.

Roads, Hotels, and the Problem of Honest Description

Throughout the excerpts, Post returns to the difficulty of describing places truthfully. She worries that praising a hotel as “perfect” would mislead readers expecting a Ritz, and that criticizing a road might offend locals who remember wagon trains. This tension between candor and courtesy shapes the narrative. The preface’s defense of “personal narrative” over advertisement is borne out in the text: Post does not flatter. She calls the landscape “the earth’s most dreary surface” and notes that the worst stretch today is “the easiest road imaginable” compared to crossing the plains in the fifties. Her frame of reference is always the Easterner’s, and she does not pretend otherwise. This honesty gives the book its texture: it is a record of one woman’s impressions, not a guidebook, and the reader is invited to weigh her judgments against their own.

Post’s narrative is best read as a series of vivid encounters rather than a systematic travelogue. The excerpts suggest that her greatest strength lies in capturing the unexpected—a silent guide, a cowboy’s blue eyes, the awkwardness of offering lunch. The preface’s apology for superficiality is partly disingenuous: the book’s value is precisely its immediacy. Readers should expect a personal, episodic account, not a comprehensive survey. The road may be the thread, but the people met along it are the destination.